WWE star Shelton Benjamin recently joined Fightful for a conversation about all things pro-wrestling, including Benjamin’s thoughts on his classic television matchup with WWE Hall of Famer, Shawn Michaels. Highlights from the interview are below.
Says everything came together perfectly during his match with Shawn Michaels:
“Going into the match, when I was told I was working with Shawn, of course, I was excited. Shawn is a legend. He’s Mr. WrestleMania. He’s every bit as good as people say he is. So I was super excited to work with him. At the time, I’m thinking, ‘This can do wonders for me.’ Because now I get to go in there with, arguably, one of the best of all time. Now I get to go show what I can do with him. Again, for me, I wasn’t nervous. You would think I would be nervous. But I was confident. I was excited because this is the kind of stuff I was waiting on. This is the kind of match that I live for, that I want, and I want more of these. So I’m like, ‘We’re going to knock this out of the park. Easily.’ There is nothing they can throw at me that I can’t handle from a performance standpoint. At the time, I always felt I was the ‘rise to the occasion’ type of athlete. So if you put me in there with a headliner, we’re going to make headlines. So everything about that match from start to finish, Shawn is a master storyteller. For me, it was super easy. Because one—I was following his lead. He was leading the match. Thanks to working with guys before him like Jericho and Eddie Guerrero, that was super easy. Eddie taught me so much in the ring on the fly. So working with Shawn, everything would come together perfectly.”
On the match’s epic finish:
“The finish was bonkers. I believe it was Michael Hayes who, again, just asked me, ‘Hey, Shelton, do you think…?’ ‘Yeah.’ But to me, it wasn’t even crazy. It was just something. When he asked me could I do it and I literally said, ‘Look, tell me where you need me to be, and I’ll be there. If you need me to be halfway across the ring or the middle of the ring—if he can get his foot up, I can get to it.’ Like I said, when he pitched it in my head, again, I didn’t realize what it was going to be when it finally happened.”
How well the match was received backstage:
“I knew it would get a good reaction but was not prepared for the reaction that it got. When we got to the back, yes. We’re talking standing ovation. Vince (McMahon) is happy. They’re pulling me aside, ‘Oh, my God, you killed it out there.’ Michaels is like, ‘You know you just did something special, right? Everything about that match was 100% perfect. Magic. That’s the perfect way to put it.”